PawPaw

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”

– Ephesians 6:1-3 NIV

I opened my eyes early in 1976 to the smell of PawPaw on Saturday mornings: Old Spice after shave, unfiltered Camel cigarettes, slightly burnt chicory and black coffee, and goo from the can by his jar of Old Spice that he used to slick back his salt peppered black hair.

PawPaw was kneeling by my couch in the living room. From my perspective, he was tilted sideways.

“Hey, there, Lil’ Buddy,” he said with a sideways grin. “‘About time you woke up.”

I sat up and the world rightened itself. PawPaw’s smiling face was right next to mine. His good eye sparkled; it wasn’t bloodshot yet and it looked just like his glass eye, a dark brown pupil framed with a white.

I hopped off the couch and plopped my duck feet onto the faded peeling vinyl floor.

MawMaw said I’d grow into them one day and be as big as my daddy. She was mistaken; I’m still the runt of the Partin men at only 5’11”, and I would limp out of the army wearing size 14-wide combat boots; by my early 50’s I’d wear a size 15 running shoe; by then I had shrunk a bit from spine compression, so the difference was compounded and when I ran I looked like the clown Ronald McDonald flopping around in comically oversized shoes. But in 1976 I trusted MawMaw.

Also, because PawPaw had told me so, I knew my big feet were good for climbing.

He should know. PawPaw was the most respected tree surgeon in all of southern Louisiana. He was only 5’4″, but he could don his climbing tool belt laden with saws and reach most limbs with his wiry arms and scurry up to a partially broken branch, whip out his hand saw like Zorro withdrawing his sword, make three cuts near the healthy part of the branch to control the break, whack it off, cover the would with black tar so bugs wouldn’t get in, and drop by my side faster than you could say Hi Ho Silver, and tell me I would be able to do that one day, too.

“Those big feet of yours will help you climb,” he told me. “Just keep trying.”

PawPaw’s accent was similar to Big Daddy’s, because he also grew up on the outskirts of Woodville, Mississippi around the time Big Daddy returned there from his three year attempt at professional fighting. I never learned if either of them knew that. PawPaw didn’t work in the sawmill, but he may have been a lumberjack in the surrounding forests.

He joined the navy and left Woodville some time during WWII. He worked in maintenance deep in the bowels of a destroyer, and lost his eye when a piece of machinery sprang out and hooked him. Honorably discharged, he moved to Baton Rouge for a job as Glenoaks custodian and groundskeeper. His accent was just enough like Big Daddy’s, Doug’s, and Grandma Foster’s that you could see they lived near each other, but of course Big Daddy’s was more refined and charming from years of practice.

“Go on now,” PawPaw said as he pulled away from me. “Get in there before MawMaw’s up.”

He nudged me out of his hug and pointed to the short hallway only a step away.

I followed PawPaw’s finger and flip flopped across the vinyl floor and past the big hallway mirror and into our house’s bathroom. I peed and then stood on the step stool PawPaw had made me from a few 2X4’s so I could wash my own hands. I shoved aside the piles of hairspray and other smelly things MawMaw and Linda used, and gently nudged over PawPaw’s Old Spice and hair oil.

I never saw him until late at night on weekdays. He left early to open the school, and stayed late to clean it. Like the Airborne Pathfinders in Vietnam, PawPaw was First In and Last Out. On those nights when he came home he smelled like Camels and a more poignant version of the pine-oil disinfectant used at hospitals back then. By then it was almost time for TV to be off and for me to go to sleep on the living room couch. But on Saturdays and Sundays, when I smelled Old Spice and that hair oil, PawPaw was my Pathfinder: he was the first face I saw as soon as I woke up in the morning, and the last face I saw before falling asleep at night.

I brushed my teeth and spit out the foam and hopped off the stool and landed with a satisfying splat on vinyl floor. MawMaw had laid out my clothes the night before and they were draped over the bathtub. I slipped them on and squeezed my feet into my walking-shoes. (I wasn’t ready for tree-climbin’ shoes yet; those were the leather ones PawPaw wore and held his spikes like the giddy-up spurs on The Lone Ranger’s boots.)

I ran out of the bathroom and into MawMaw fluffing her hair in front of the hallway mirror. She was wearing her fuzzy light blue slippers and shaggy grey-white bathrobe the exact color of her disheveled hair. She turned and knelt down and locked her gaze on my eyes and smiled mischievously and said: “Gimme some shugga!”

I giggled and brought my arms up to my chest and ready to defend my face.

She shuffled along the vinyl floor in her fuzzy slippers and got about a foot from my face and said again: “Gimme some shugga!”

I giggled and bring my fists closer to just below my cheeks; it was my modified crawfish defense, like how a crawfish holds up both pinchers and keeps them pointed at you so you can’t grab their whiskers, but closer to my cheeks because I knew MawMaw was aiming there.

MawMaw’s held up her own pinchers and scooched closer and closer and snapped her thumb and fingers together like a crawfish about to get me.

“I’m gonna steal me some shugga,” she said.

She thrust out her pinchers out but ducked them down and tickled my exposed ribs. I erupted in giggles and my defense dropped down and she shot some shugga on my cheeks like a shugga sniper with rapid fire reflexes. I squealed and raised my pinchers back to my cheeks; MawMaw tickled me again and I squirmed and she snuck in a few more shots of shugga.

I laughed loudly and she said: “Shhh… You’ll wake the baby.”

I shush so I don’t wake the baby but I made the mistake of lowering my hands: MawMaw is a shugga’ sniper who saw the opening and swooped in for some more shugga.

I squealed again and she shushed me again. As soon as I calmed down, she swooped in again and smacked me on the cheek and I squealed and she shushed me again.

“Get in there and help PawPaw make breakfast,” she said.

She rotated me toward the kitchen and gently nudged me away and stepped into the bathroom for her long ritual of getting made up for the day. I took a plop towards the kitchen but stopped in front of the mirror and turned and scooted toes up to the scuff mark from PawPaw’s tree-climbing shoes. I looked at my reflection and the bright red smudge of MawMaw’s lipstick that grazed the top of my reflected head. Nothing had changed; my head still only kissed the smudge instead of bursting above it.

I stood up more straight and put more weight on my tippie-toes, and because of my big feet I gained an inch and saw the top of my head poke above the smudge; I held my stance as if practicing being taller will make it happen faster.

“You not going to grow by lookin’ at yourself,” PawPaw said. “Come in here and eat some pancakes with your PawPaw.”

I trotted over and stepped up on the wooden stool by the stove so I could help.

I asked PawPaw if we were going to climb trees after we watched cartoons.

“Nope,” PawPaw said. “Today is your day wit’ Wendy and Denise.”

That sounded fun. Denise did magic tricks and Wendy always bought me a Slushie from the 7-11 near the park.

PawPaw listened and then looked down at me on my stool and stared straight into my eyes with his good one. His smile broadened and his good eye twinkled mischievously. He pulled the last unfiltered Camel from the crushed pack in his pocket and crumbled the pack and dropped it in a trash can by the kitchen’s carport door. He slipped out a silver Zippo from the little pocket in his blue jeans, and with his other hand moved the white Camel cigarette to a foot from his lips; the little black printed camel was away from his lips and in plain site to me.

Wait PawPaw! I said.

You’re about to light the wrong end, I pointed out.

It’s backwards again, I said. The little black camel goes in your mouth and you light the other end.

PawPaw chuckled and said: “You right, Lil’ Buddy. Your smarter than your PawPaw.”

He flipped the cigarette around and lit it and I smelled the Zippo fuel that’s not unlike the JP-4 jet fuel that blasts paratroopers in the face as they board a plane from the rear, but milder. He snapped the Zippo shut and put it back in the little pocket of his blue jeans.

PawPaw smoked cigarettes like PopEye smoked a pipe: he could hum and sing and talk with it out of the corner of his mouth. PawPaw smoked and hummed something I couldn’t understand and cooked pancakes while I stared out the window and through the dusty spiderwebs on the outside towards the fishing pond. There was a tall rusted metal gate leaning against the fence from when a previous owner tried to raise cows, but we had no animals other than bullfrogs we’d sometimes gig for dinner, so there was no need to fix the gate. Those bullfrogs lived in the pond and weren’t going anywhere, PawPaw had said.

PawPaw turned to the kitchen table and shoved the pile of his old tools and my Lone Ranger pistol and bullet belt aside. He put a jug of Aunt Jemima syrup on the table and a roll of paper towels to use as napkins. He poured both of us a glass of Blue Bell and we drown our pancakes in Aunt Jemima and took big bites and washed them down with swigs from the glasses. We finished and I stepped up to the sink and helped PawPaw wash dishes. When we finished washing, he asked if I’d like to walk to the store to get some milk and cookie dough.

My eyebrows shot up and I asked if we could climb the tree; there was only one tree I called the tree, and it was the really big sprawling stately oak tree across from the convenience store on the corner of Hooper and Plank that didn’t have Slushies but had those elf in the tree cookies.

Just then MawMaw walked into the kitchen. She had done her hair in a towering beehive held aloft with copious amounts of hair spray and it towered over PawPaw and me. She tore a paper towel from the roll on the table and pressed it to her lips and showed me the red kiss mark; she handed me the napkin and said it was my breakfast shugga.

I giggled and set the breakfast shugga by my Lone Ranger pistol. She gave PawPaw some shugga on his cheek and he told her we were going to the store. She told me to hurry and brush my teeth because Wendy was coming and I didn’t want to be late.

I return and PawPaw’s reached for the door but paused by the deep-freezer next to the trash can and grabbed a Russet potato from the bag resting on top of the freezer. He opened the carport door and we stepped outside to the sound of a thousand chirping crickets. He shut the door and opened the top flap of our cricket cage and took out his Old Henry two-blade folding knife and cut the potato into chunks dropped them inside inside. He shut the cage and held my hand and we squeezed between his old and beat up brown Ford F150 truck and stacks of Yellow Pages phone books piled up against the carport wall to our house. We crab-walked our way past the books and stepped onto the crunchy gravel towards the blacktop Hooper Road.

PawPaw had a few side gigs. Twice a year we had stacks of books in the carport to keep them out of the rain. In spring, around stinging caterpillar season, we’d get that year’s Yellow Pages of advertisements of all of Baton Rouge’s businesses and PawPaw and Kelly’s Girls would deliver them door to door. In fall, just before hurricane season was in full swing, we’d get Christmas catalogs and a different set of Kelly’s Girls would help PawPaw deliver them. This year, Denise and Wendy were Kelly’s Girls, a national company that catered seasonal work and typing jobs towards young ladies, many of whom were single mothers unable to work traditional office hours. Somehow, PawPaw had finagled the contract for Baton Rouge.

As for the crickets, they were for the back yard pond or Sunday trips to False River in PawPaw’s pirogue.

We reached the blacktop and turned left towards Plank Road, my big tree, and the corner convenience store that had the tubes of cookie dough with little elves who lived in a tree that looked a lot like mine.

I saw the stately oak tree at the empty corner of Hooper and Plank Road. Its sprawling undulating branches make it seem like a giant octopus with sprawling tentacles draped in grey Spanish moss and one of those tentacles hoovers a few feet above the ground about 40 feet from the trunk and forms a perfect saddle that beckons me to climb into it. I let go of PawPaw’s hand and rush to the tree and reach up and grab the to of the saddle and my fingers slip into grooves in the old bark that are as deep and sprawly as the wrinkles on the back of PawPaw’s weathered neck when I hug him goodnight.

I grasped that gnarled bark with both hands and heaved with all my might but could not pull myself up. I stood on my tippie toes like in front of the hallway mirror and pulled again and again but could not pull myself higher. But then I felt PawPaw’s hands under my arms and I got stronger and pulled myself onto the branch and swung my big left foot over the curved branch and raised a hand in the air as if waving goodbye.

Hi Ho Silver! I said.

The branch swayed gently up and down and I was riding in my saddle like the Lone Ranger on Silver.

I was quick to celebrate and faster to forget. I eyed the branch above me and began to reach. I stretched and grunted but could not touch the bark. Today was not my day. Instead, I grabbed some of the gray Spanish moss dangling by my hands and yanked off a tuff and held it on my chin and looked straight into PawPaw’s good eye.

I look Craig now! I said.

PawPaw chuckled like Puck and reached up and grabbed his own beard and put it on. We laughed with each other like two old men who were best friends and had already knew all the good jokes and didn’t need words to laugh.

He put his beard back on the tree and reminded me we have to get cookie dough and get back home before Wendy and Denise showed up. I kept my beard and reached out my arms. PawPaw swung me over the saddle and onto the ground. We held hands and turned to the store and paused at the Plank Road red light until it turned green. Across the street, PawPaw pushed the big glass door open and I put on my moss as a disguise just like The Lone Ranger would wear a fake beard so he could take off his mask and look like just another old man in town. The Christmas bell tied to a string above the door rang; the man behind the counter looked up to see who came in.

“Well hello there, Mr. Ed,” he said. “Who got with you today?”

It’s me! I exclaimed as I lowered my disguise.

“Wow!” he said. “I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Jason.”

I put the beard back on and he gasped and told me it was a good disguise. I revealed myself again myself again told him that The Lone Ranger was a master of disguise and that I was too.

The man and I chatted while PawPaw shopped. He walked up to the counter with a tube of cookie dough with elves in a tree on the wrapper, a half gallon carton of Blue Bell milk, and a six pack of Miller pony bottles. Without being asked the man reached up and brought down a pack of Camels and put it on the counter by the beer. He gave us two plastic bags to carry things home, one for PawPaw and one for me.

“Bye, Mr. Ed.” the man said. He then looked down at me and said, “You make sure your PawPaw gets home safely, okay Mr. Jason?”

I told him I would.

PawPaw carried the milk and ponies and I carried the cookie dough made by elves that looked like the paintings Craig made at home but without moss and without Puck peering from behind a branch and no Lone Ranger saddle like my tree had.

As I promised the man, we made it home safely. I don’t recall if I saw cars flying down Hooper Road on the walk home. All I remember about that walk were the weeds weeble wobbling and a feeling that it was the best day of my life, and that the day had only just begun and my whole life was ahead of me with PawPaw by my side.

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